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Escape from Paradise, – Now being made into a movie!

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The book’s sensational reviews!

“It took me two and a half evenings to complete your un-put-downable book…it is a unique contribution to the appreciation of a life in Singapore. Thank you for having written it.”C. V. Devan Nair, former President of Singapore.

“Bought the book from Select this weekend and can’t put it down! It’s a great read! And so nostalgic for me—the good old days!” Glen Goei, writer and director of the Miramax film That’s the Way I Like It and who played the title role opposite Anthony Hopkins in the London production of M. Butterfly. Mr. Goei’s latest film isThe Blue Mansion – Click for the trailer!

“It is a remarkable story and so full of intrigue that it reads at times like fiction.” Jonathan Burnham, Editor in Chief & President, Talk Miramax Books.

“This book out-Dallas, Dallas. No one has written so well of the other side of paradise,” Francis T. Seow, former Solicitor General of Singapore

ThunderBall Films is successfully putting together the movie production of Escape from Paradise and has received a new LOI (Letter of Intent) from actress Bai Ling who starred with Richard Gere in the film Red Cross.

This includes a commitment from a CPA firm who does tax credit financing in Ireland, a possible location to film, as part of the package needed for investors – along with the CPA firm’s commitment to apply for and finance the tax credits if ThunderBall does shoot in Ireland and what portion of the budget they would provide.
For inquiries, please contact John Harding at jbharding@gmail.com.

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America, self-appointed conscience of the world

Viewpoint by Conrad Steinhoff from the Lebanon Il Advertiser

President Obama can’t seem to get anything right. He’s naive. He lives in a fantasy world. He’s weak and vacillating. Have I covered it all? Oh, and he’s deceitful. He lies to cover up his blunders. What else? There’s more, I’m sure, but you get the picture. The picture, that is, according to Republicans and a few Democrats in Congress, and the Neocon conservative pundits in the press. A lot of the vitriol is directed to Obama’s conduct of foreign affairs, going back to the Arab Spring” when he “bungled” the Benghazi affair in Libya. He is personally responsible for the death of our ambassador and three other Americans in that incident, they claim.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has been determined to prove that. They have held—I’ve lost count how many—hearings to uncover the “truth” about Benghazi, without success. “Getting at the truth” means getting somebody to corroborate their every problem. They are so frustrated they are reduced to throwing tantrums.

The next big blunder is Syria. Obama drew a line in the sand—or rather a red line. Any use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would result in an attack on their chemical weapons facilities, said President Obama. President Assad stepped over the prompted by public opinion polls that showed the American people strongly opposed to bombing. Into the space thus created stepped Vladimir Putin, Russian President, to offer a deal where the Syrians (who he has been arming) would give up their chemical weapons. Obama jumped at the deal. Immediately, conservatives howled in protest. “You said you would attack. Now you have made us look weak, and a sucker for the Russians.” In my view, President Obama’s mistake wasn’t his “failure” to bomb Syria, but rather in drawing the red line in the first place. Games of chicken should stay on the school playground.

Neocon pundit Charles Krauthammer has been all over Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry on foreign affairs for a long time. He never lets up. Recently he has written of nothing else. George Will, a fellow conservative pundit, is more “intellectual,” and therefore a bit more subtle, but his disdain for this weakling president is palpable. Krauthammer roundly condemns Obama’s weakness, his failure to be tough, his naive belief that talking can solve been determined to prove that. He is particularly contemptuous of the negotiations with Iran over their nuclear program. His latest onslaught is about Ukraine.

The Senate warriors, led by John McCain, along with the neocons in the media, howl in outrage that Obama’s lack of resolve throughout his presidency is the cause of the present situation. Putin has decided (correctly, they assure us), that he can take the Crimea, and amass troops on Ukraine’s eastern border and likely seize more Ukrainian territory, all because Obama won’t stop him.

An interesting bit of history throws a spotlight on what is happening in Ukraine. Steve Weisman of Reader Supported News (RSN) has done an extensive three-part piece of investigative reporting on Ukraine, going back to the Cold War era. He traces the strong strain of anti-Semitic fascism that dominated the politics of the Ukraine region of the Soviet Union and which is still operative in Ukraine today. Along with this is the well-documented record of American meddling, much of it by non-governmental but highly political groups, in Ukrainian politics over many years with the goal of drawing Ukraine into the European sphere and away from Russia. Bill and Hillary Clinton were active players in this enterprise. Their meddling included collaboration with the neo-Nazi government and wealthy oligarchs prominent in Ukrainian politics and society. The culmination of their machinations was the economic agreement with the European Union that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was about to sign. That is where Putin stepped in with his offer of $15 billion in exchange for not signing. Yanukovych went for the offer and from there everything unraveled. Now Yanukovych has fled to Russia, the corrupt oligarchs and reactionary politicians are running the government, and Putin has seized the Crimea.
While all this is going on, Obama’s critics are blaming him for the mess. As with Syria, as with Iran, the mess is his fault because he wasn’t tough enough. But the silence is deafening when one asks these folks what Obama should have done, or what they would have done if they had been in charge. Send troops, bomb the place, send our Navy into the Black Sea and shell the Russian base at Sevastopol? How about a bombing campaign to take out the Iranian nuclear centrifuges? A Navy Seals team to take out Putin? They have nothing to suggest.

Much of the mess in the Middle East and Ukraine is in significant part the outcome of our misguided belief that we somehow we are not only the right but the responsibility as the world’s shining city on a hill, to involve ourselves, sometimes behind the scenes, sometimes out there with our bombs and troops, in making the world over in our image. The real failing of President Obama in all this is endorsing the neocon worldview with his rhetoric while doing something else. He does appear to vacillate. He vacillates while poll after poll shows a huge majority of Americans, Republicans as well as Democrats and Independents, want no part of foreign meddling and military ad• ventures. The tragic fiascos of Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan have convinced most of us that enough is already too much. The President would do well to firmly and clearly side with us, the American majority.